Sometimes I walk from my apartment and go
any direction for a few hours
the way I would in Spain
where I’d sit among the cows and write bad
love poems to a woman back in America
or look into the valley thinking of home
where every few months as a kid
I’d yell at my parents and run as far as my anger
what am I running from now seven months into Fresno
into dance socials and meetups
what do I expect to find down pot-holed streets lit
with nightly sirens and the rattle of a shopping cart
pushed into a canal weeks later still on its side
half-submerged a cage for drought-land water
when I come back to the apartment
the neighborhood cat emerges jingling
usually out from under a car and stretches
knowing I’ll let her in for ten minutes
to cuddle the way we do every night
then carry her back into streetlight littered
with cracks of video game guns from an upstairs window
I ask my grandma how she survives
and she tells me to try on what she’s worn
Don’t make other people’s problems your problems
Figure out yourself first
What choice do you have but to move forward
I don’t tell her
I almost killed myself a couple years ago
some days I drive out of town and walk to the horizon
but never get any closer it replaces itself
it surrounds me on all sides it circles me open
in art class I drew it as a line
I walk barefoot through layers of hills
spring grass reacquainting
I ask the sky how it goes on with infinite color
I ask the earth with my toes in its hands
I lay my fear in the cradle of two roots
Bradley Samore currently works as a technical writer. His poems have appeared in The Florida Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Thimble, and other publications. He is a winner of the Creative Writing Ink Poetry Prize. www.BradleySamore.com
Image: “White Flag (Do You Ever Feel…)” by Alex J. Tunney
